The Vessel:
It was always there, Amy saw it her whole life. Her mother's favorite Vase; it was beautiful. The swirling indigo blue flowers on a white pallet, the yellow edges and center of each flower so elegantly painted. Her mother loved it, a gift from her late husband. Amy's father had died when she was 5 of cancer. It was a shock, but one she barely remembered. But her mother did, and she kept the vase in memory of her lost love. Amy used to run around the vase, playing with dolls and stuffed animals. Holding the stuffed lizard up to the vase she'd hold the felt tongue out and lap at the flowers, her dolls would play at the base and she'd put the flowers that fell from the vase in their hair, sometimes her mother would braid them into her own long brown locks.
Years later the Vase was still there, that vessel of love. Amy walked into the house, closing the door with her foot. The thump of the door resounding through the hall. She steps in her arms filled with bags, "Mom?" She calls as she walks past the vase. "I brought you your medicine!" The sun set slowly that day-
Now a young woman at 19 Amy had to bury her mother. Standing at the side of the gravestone, she held the vase in her hands, filled with her mother's favorite flowers, Lilacs. She had long since cried her makeup into rivers of dark chalk on her cheeks, she pushed back a fresh drop from her eyes and looked down at the vase, at least she had what her mother had loved so dearly, and as long as she did, she knew she could keep going.
Freshman, Sophmore, Junior, Senior year all flew by so fast. Before time could catch up she was graduating and going into the field. After dealing with her mother's illness for so long she had taken up nursing. Amy wanted nothing more than to be there for people when things were hardest. Walking by that same Vase which sat in her windowsill Amy stopped to water the Lilacs that were growing in it, it wasn't the same lilacs as that day, she wasn't that good of a florist, but they were lilacs, and they made her smile.
Two years later, married to one of the doctors at her hospital Amy is in love, her life has been a dream since meeting him, so perfect that she hasn't even thought of the vase or its meaning. She simply watered the flowers and went on with her life. She set it on a pedestal in their new house, it looked simply elegant in the foyer. He said that he loved it too, that made Amy very happy. The simple things swelled her heart so with contentment for her little stretch of love....but it wouldn't last.
Stress eats people.
A botched procedure, a missed opportunity, being let go. It simply swallowed him whole. He turned to things he wouldn't have thought, alcohol and sex to cure his darkness. He used her for one of those, and the other used him to get to her. It wasn't long till their idyllic life of two years ago was gone. It all ended one night, the bottle was empty this time and so was she. It couldn't be avoided, a fight broke out and in a rage he pushed her. Tumbling back she fell towards the vessel, and as she hit the floor, she looked up to see the vase wobble in a circle before falling to the wood ground beside her.
As the crash broke, so too did her heart. She couldn't even feel the blood as she bled from the broken china, all she saw the broken love in front of her. She felt her heart beat quickly with each stomp of his boot as he walked closer, her face bleeding from the small cuts, her hands holding the shards, the pretty lilacs her mother loved; he stomped on it all, right before her stricken eyes. As the china cracked, so to did her heart. The door slammed, still, she sat there, tears in her wide eyes, her hair tumbling into her face, her bloody hand reached out and touched the indigo lilacs that once filled her mother's vessel, that once filled her heart.
(Don't know why I was feeling dark with this one )